In the following excerpt, Hanson examines Ruskin's idealized version of his own childhood from the perspective of a God who is capable of condemning as well as blessing.

I

In his childhood conception of a sacred covenant, John Ruskin exulted in the exchange of a child's obedience for the Father's blessing. He was reluctant, however, to confront the Lord's cursing, which, inescapable in Scripture, left him silent and incapacitated. He abruptly ended his childhood sermons, the Sermons on the Pentateuch, with an unfinished account of the cursing in Deuteronomy. Thirty years later, on the verge of a religious crisis, he cut short his epistolary sermons to the children at Winnington Hall, a girls' academy, and retracted his discussion of cursing the Lord's enemies in what...